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Saturday, December 4, 2010

TANGLED

Tangled is a 2010 American animated musical film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. The film features the voices of Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi and is the 50th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. The story is largely based on the German fairy tale Rapunzel by the Brothers Grimm. It premiered in theatres and in 3D cinemas on November 24, 2010. To date, it is the most expensive animated film, with a budget estimated to be around $260 million.











Plot
An elderly woman named Gothel witnesses a single ray of sun hit the ground, creating a magical flower with the ability to keep herself young when she sings to it. Centuries later, the queen of a nearby kingdom falls ill while expecting a child. Her guards located the mysterious flower, hidden by Gothel, and bring it to the queen. The flower heals the queen and she gives birth to a girl named Rapunzel, who comes to inherit the flower's magic through her long golden hair. One night, Gothel kidnaps Rapunzel and isolates her in a tower as her own daughter. However, every year on her birthday, the kingdom sends floating lanterns into the sky longing for their lost princess to return.

Eighteen years later, Rapunzel tells Gothel that she wishes to see these annual floating lights that appear on her birthday, but Gothel rejects her by telling Rapunzel that the world is a dangerous place. Meanwhile, the thief Flynn Rider and his twin thugs heist the tiara of the missing princess from the castle. As they flee, Flynn abandons the twins, allowing the pursuing castle guards to capture them. The lead guard's horse, Maximus, is separated from his rider and continues the search for Flynn on his own.

Flynn happens upon Rapunzel's tower to hide in, only to be held captive by Rapunzel and her pet chameleon, Pascal. Rapunzel bargains with Flynn that if he escorts her to the lights and back, she will return the tiara. Flynn agrees as Rapunzel is excited to be free, but is soon conflicted between the elation from the new experience and the guilt of disobedience. Later, Gothel returns to find Rapunzel gone, but finds the tiara hidden in a bag under the stairs.

The pair arrive at the Snuggly Duckling, a seedy pub filled with thugs. However, the thugs recognize Flynn from the poster and plan to turn him in, but Rapunzel confronts the men stating that she needs Flynn to complete her dream of seeing the lights. The thugs decide to help her as they too have unfinished dreams. Gothel watches through a window, but before she can do anything, the royal guards enter and pursue Flynn and Rapunzel to a wooden dam where the two hide in a closed-off cave. Maximus causes the dam to break and the surrounding area and the cave begin to flood. Thinking that they will die, Flynn reveals to Rapunzel that his real name is actually Eugene Fitzherbert, and she explains that her hair glows when she sings. Realizing that it would light the cave, she sings and the cave is illuminated as they swim to a loosened clump of rocks and escape the cave. Meanwhile, Gothel finds the thieving twins and offers them something worth much more than the tiara.

That night, Rapunzel heals Flynn's hand, which was injured in their escape, with her hair and explains that if her hair is cut, it loses its power and turns brown. As Flynn goes to collect firewood, Gothel appears and pleads with Rapunzel to return to the tower, but Rapunzel refuses as she now has a liking for Flynn. Gothel gives Rapunzel the tiara in the bag and says that Flynn is only interested in it and will leave Rapunzel after he gets it. The next morning, Rapunzel forces Maximus to strike a truce with Flynn as the group arrives at the castle for the princess' birthday festival. That evening, Flynn rows Rapunzel out in a small dingy to the middle of an adjacent lake to gain a good view of the lantern release. Rapunzel gives Flynn the tiara saying that she now trusts him. Flynn sees the twins on a different shore and tells Rapunzel that he will be right back. Flynn apologizes to the twins and returns the tiara, but the twins want Rapunzel instead. Moments later, the twins tell Rapunzel that Flynn has abandoned her for the tiara, when in reality the twins have tied Flynn to a boat after knocking him unconscious. However, Gothel betrays them to look like she's rescuing Rapunzel.

Rapunzel returns to her tower room and notices that a flag she collected at the festival looks exactly like the paintings she made all over the tower's interior. The sunburst design is an early memory from her life in the kingdom. Rapunzel realizes that she is the lost princess and confronts Gothel. Meanwhile, Flynn is arrested and is sentenced to be hanged, but is instead rescued by Maximus and the thugs from the Snuggly Duckling. Flynn and Maximus rush to Rapunzel's tower and find Rapunzel held captive by Gothel. Gothel stabs Flynn, but Rapunzel tells Gothel that as long as she lets her heal Flynn, she will go away with Gothel willingly. Since Flynn would rather die than have Rapunzel stay trapped with Gothel, Flynn cuts Rapunzel's hair, causing all of it to lose its power and turn brown. As a result, Gothel quickly ages and falls from the tower, but disintegrates before reaching the ground. Dying, Flynn tells Rapunzel that his dream was her and as Rapunzel cries, her tears suddenly heal Flynn to return to life, overjoying Rapunzel, and leading her to kiss him. Later, Flynn returns Rapunzel to meet her parents and they eventually get married.







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The Grimm yarn of Rapunzel, the girl with the long, golden hair, has been tangled, twisted and extended to get her out of the tower and into the company of a dashing bad boy, musicalized in old-school Broadway fashion and shot through with broad comedy and action rendered in vivid 3D. The Disney name and the studio’s all-powerful promo combined are sure to propel this profitably through the holiday season and beyond, though the question lingers as to the extent of resistance preteen boys will show to this girl-centric romp.

Walt Disney himself pondered an animated Rapunzel feature as far back as the 1940s, and there are two major elements in the film his studio finally has produced that strongly register as Disney trademarks: the flawlessly prettified rendering of nature and the leading characters as well as the incisive portrait of an evil, manipulative villainess. On the more current side of the ledger are the forthrightly adventurous heroine, egregiously present-day phraseology (“Best day ever!”) and the previously unimagined uses to which Rapunzel puts her 70 feet of golden hair, including as a whip and lasso. So shimmering and lush are the girl’s locks that shampoo commercials never will look the same.
Transformed from the original tale’s daughter of poor parents into a princess kidnapped by the scheming Mother Gothel for the power the girl’s golden locks have to keep the woman ageless, the story devised by screenwriter Dan Fogelman (Cars, Bolt) pivots on the tension between Gothel’s need to keep Rapunzel away from the outside world and the yearning of the captive, who’s about to turn 18, to discover it. “When Will My Life Begin?” — the initial musical number from star Disney composer Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater — not only enunciates her desires but shows that, during her youthful isolation, she has been extensively exposed to the arts through reading, painting, music and so on.
Still, given the modern take here, it might have been amusing to acknowledge that growing up in solitary confinement might give a girl some complexes, neuroses and misconceptions about life on the outside. Once she absconds with a dashing thief (not a prince) with the unlikely moniker of Flynn Rider, a bumpy learning curve as to the real world could have provided a bountiful extra layer of humor and behavioral interest.
As it is, the film contents itself with charting the inevitable conversion of Flynn from the charming scoundrel who with two hulking highwaymen types steal the royal crown to a domesticated escort suitable for the daughter of the idyllic realm’s king and queen. Along the way, there is a rollicking encounter in a roadside tavern with a band of ruffians who turn out to be as congenial and musically prone as the seven dwarfs as well as the shenanigans of a comically vigilant white horse, all of which reflects the antic showbizzy approach one associates with John Lasseter, the driving force behind Pixar who now also runs Disney Animation.
Although she is sidelined for significant periods, there still is the determined Mother Gothel to reckon with. One can’t quite put her in the pantheon of evil alongside Snow White’s queen or the Wicked Witch of the West, but she’s a formidable first cousin as she stops at nothing to maintain her hold on her prize. No small part of her power stems from the dynamite performance of Broadway star Donna Murphy, who socks over her dialogue and musical vocalizations with insinuating flair.
In markedly blander roles, Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi do agreeably expressive work with utilitarian dialogue that feels too contemporaneously American and sturdy songs in a throwback style. It’s hard to think of a modern film with a more pristine appearance; every frame looks like it’s just been cleaned and polished by Cinderella herself.
The 3D work is excellent, though the discrepancy in screen brightness between what is seen with and without glasses never has been more pronounced, at least at the screening caught; normally, one can expect the image to dim by 25-30% upon donning 3D shades, but here the light of the film onscreen was cut roughly in half.
source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/todd-mccarthys-film-review-tangled-42752

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